clearly that they had an opportunity to settle the question of slavery—that is, to end it—before it could impact future generations. The fact that they did not do so is partially owing to the dangerously fragile condition that the new American nation was in at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Second Continental Congress America had won its independence from Britain, but the nation did not yet have a true government of its own. The Second Continental Congress, which had raised a massive army of untrained volunteers and
